On Campus; Casino Profits Help Indians Get Degree in Gaming

Published: March 2, 1994

Using profits from their reservation casino, the Menominee Indians of northeastern Wisconsin have bankrolled a community college that offers an associate of arts degree in casino gambling.

Now in its third semester, the College of the Menominee Nation, in Keshena, Wis., about 60 miles northwest of Green Bay, intends to train Indians who want to run casinos on their reservations. The Menominees have had a dramatic infusion of income -- estimated at $8 million last year -- since expanding a bingo hall into a casino in 1989.

Dr. Verna Fowler, the founder and president of the two-year college, said tribal leaders invested in the college to give the reservation's 3,500 residents an opportunity for higher education without leaving home.

There are 10 students now; ultimately, the enrollment is expected to reach 450. Until the national accreditation process is completed, students are receiving course credit from the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, about 60 miles to the southwest.

The Menominee college, one of 27 colleges affiliated with Indian tribes across the country, initially focused on early-childhood education, natural resources management and forestry, a major industry on the 225,000-acre reservation, Dr. Fowler said.

But with the tribe's success in gaming, other tribes began asking the Menominees for help. "Pretty soon, they were asking us if they could bring back people from other tribes to learn about gaming," she said.

"We teach things like marketing and customer relations in the classroom, but other things we have to teach on the job in a real-time casino setting," said Robert Berry, a former Nevada casino owner who assists the tribe. "We teach people to deal blackjack at the table. You can't do that in a classroom." Transfer Student Shuns Publicity

The Swarthmore College student who was asked to attend a different college this semester after another student accused him of sexual harassment is trying to adjust to his new institution, Boston University, with as little hoopla as possible.

"I'm not going to be doing any interviews at all," the student, Ewart Yearwood, said by telephone yesterday. "I have to become a normal student again. I don't like being a celebrity."

But Mr. Yearwood's unusual exchange program has attracted attention at Boston University. Front-page articles in The Daily Free Press, the student newspaper, gave him a certain notoriety on the Charles River campus before he even arrived.

Mr. Yearwood's lawyer, Harvey A. Silverglate, said his client was doing well in his new environment. "Things have been relatively low-profile at B.U.," Mr. Silverglate said. "He's a student again, rather than a symbol."

University officials are quiet about his case. "He has asked that we respect his privacy, and we are," said Kevin Carleton, a spokesman for Boston University.

The president of Swarthmore, Alfred H. Bloom, decided to pay for Mr. Yearwood's tuition at any other college or university this semester after a disciplinary panel deadlocked on whether he had sexually harassed a classmate. Mr. Bloom decided that Mr. Yearwood was not guilty of sexual harassment, but said that he had defied a restraining order and "severely scared" the young woman as well as several other students and faculty members.

At Boston University, student reaction to Mr. Yearwood's admission was mixed. Some said he should be presumed innocent until proven guilty; others said admitting him showed a lack of respect for women. Middlebury to Offer A 3-Year B.A. Degree

Saying that all subjects are not learned equally well in the same amount of time and acknowledging concern about the rising cost of higher education, the president of Middlebury College has announced that the college will offer a three-year bachelor of arts degree.

"It really strikes me as odd that we in higher education are still so bound by the limitations of scheduling that were imposed on us many generations ago," the president, John McCardell, said in an interview yesterday. "It is very hard to defend the proposition that all subjects are learned equally well in periods of 13 weeks, with a term paper in the middle and a final examination at the end."

Students who enroll in the new program, called the International Major, will spend the summer before their first fall term on the campus in Middlebury, Vt., studying a foreign language. They will stay on campus for their first year and a second summer. In their second year they will study abroad -- in Florence, Madrid, Moscow, Paris or other cities with approved programs. For the third year, they will return to Vermont to write a thesis or complete a senior project.

The first group of International Majors are scheduled to begin classes in the summer of 1995. Like those who enter this fall, they, too, will be the class of '98.

Photo: At the College of the Menominee Nation in Keshena, Wis., Dr. Verna Fowler, founder and president of the college, teaching a class on personnel management as part of a course on casino gambling. (Joan E. Gutheridge for The New York Times)